A meeting place for food and word lovers

And a peek at cookbook no. 7

I did it, I handed in the manuscript of book number 7! What a relief and a joy. It’s been a difficult time to try not to be distracted. I paused this newsletter for the first time ever, I’ve been trying to stay off social media and had a kid with the flu at home for 10 days (who was a good hand model), but still wrote, in between finishing recipe photographs, doing the cover photoshoot (with the wonderful Yuki Sugiura) and creating some linocut prints for the endpapers and it all came together!

This new Japanese cookbook will be based on essential pantry ingredients. There are seven chapters: soy sauce, miso, seaweed, sake, rice vinegar, sesame and tea. There is a lot of history and research behind these everyday ingredients and the recipes inspired by them. I deep-dove into koji, Zen cuisine (sesame tofu!), pickles (so many pickles), medicinal foods, regional specialties and sake lees, I read haiku poems about the seasons and the Ryori Monogatari, Japan’s oldest cookbook from 1643. As usual, I loved going into the history of these ingredients to understand their significance in shaping and being shaped by Japan’s history.

It will be out in November this year. I learned so much, I cannot wait to share the recipes, which are homely and so doable and delicious but I think perhaps a bit different to what you might already know — also, there is still time to put your hand up for some recipe testing if you’re interested! I found some wonderful books and resources along the way to recommend that I will share soon too.

While all this was happening, another project started taking shape in the background, which I am SO excited about — it’s called Scribehound Food.

It’s a new, carefully curated platform of food writers put together by

Mark Diacono

and

Karen Barnes

. I’m so thrilled to be part of this collective of writers, along with Diana Henry, Olia Hercules,

Anissa Helou

,

Georgina Hayden

, Fuchsia Dunlop, Bee Wilson,

Noor Murad

, Ravinder Bhogal,

Caroline Eden

and so many more.

We will each contribute a piece of food writing a month and there are thirty of us, so subscribers get a daily, inspiring email from one of these food writers (and if listening is much more your thing, we will be recording our own pieces in our own voices so you can listen instead while you’re going about your day).

There’s so much variety in the group of writers that I think it will just be a constant source of joy and inspiration.

I’ve been feeling more and more like it is getting harder to connect on social media than it has ever been — everything is controlled by an algorithm and I can no longer find all the food people I loved seeing and connecting with, instead all I get constant whir of reels of content and people I didn’t sign up for. In so many ways, Substack has been a wonderful way to connect again and I’m so grateful to have this space, but I feel particularly excited about Scribehound because it’s not just me there, it’s thirty amazing food writers who I admire and it’s the community of subscribers who are there. It’s launching April 1st but I’ve already heard from the Scribehound gardening channel how it’s the comments and the community there that really have made that space such a wonderful “meeting place”.

I have high hopes that the Scribehound Food channel is going to be that new space for people who love food and words.

The first piece I will be sharing will be about a fascinating account I stumbled across while down a rabbit hole researching miso for my manuscript. It’s the travel journal of a young Florentine who visited Japan in the late 1500s just a few years before Japan then closed its doors to the rest of the world for 265 years. It’s a particularly fascinating account because this young man was not a missionary or a diplomat or an official, he was just traveling around the world with his father, no fleet or anything, and rather than the very religious accounts that we do have from Europeans around that time, this Florentine spent a lot more time noting down what they were eating and drinking and whether the landscape would be good for cultivating olives and contemplating a life there. It’s potentially the first account of experiencing miso by a westerner. I’m surprised it isn’t well known or referred to more but I have translated my favourite part of it and will be sharing this gem that combines the two places my heart belongs to most in the world with the very first Scribehound piece.

If you’re interested in checking out Scribehound Food, there is a special offer for the first month, just £1 for the month, which means 30 pieces by 30 authors. I really think you’re going to love it!

Listen

Sometime ago I was interviewed by the wonderful

Lee Tran Lam

for the Powerhouse Museum’s Culinary Archive on a couple of topics I love (the whole series is wonderful, you should go through them ALL). Here’s the one on Eel —intriguing, entertaining and a little slimy! You’ll be able to listen via the links here: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, YouTube

Read

My old friend, photographer extraordinaire

Luisa Brimble

also has an incredible way with words and this piece on the Extreme Push and Pull of Filipino Food and a turned down book proposal is a must read. It just really sounds like this is a book about the Filipino food we never knew and it needs to be Luisa to tell it!

Also super interesting,

carla lalli music

on the True Cost of Being on Youtube. I am not a video maker but I have always wondered about this and so appreciate her frankness and openness to share the numbers.

Have you seen the beauty that is Nadine Ingram’s Love Crumbs yet? This wonderful cookbook is like a poem. If you don’t know Nadine, she is the owner and baker behind Flour and Stone, Sydney’s most special bakery. I wrote about the two cakes she dedicated to my children, Mariù (grape, rosemary and lemon cake) and Luna (a lemon, limoncello and mascarpone bomb of a dessert!) here.